Double attack in Pakistan kills 25

AT least 25 people were killed in troubled southwest Pakistan when militants blew up a bus carrying women students and attacked a hospital treating survivors, officials say.

A bomb attack on a bus in Quetta, capital of the restive Baluchistan province, killed 14 women students, and another 11 people died in a blast at a city hospital about 90 minutes later on Saturday.

The second attack hit the emergency ward of the city's Bolan Medical Complex where the wounded were taken and was followed by a gun battle with militants holed up inside the hospital.

The siege lasted for several hours and ended when security forces stormed the building.

Quetta was the scene two of the bloodiest attacks in Pakistan this year, both targeting Shi'ite Muslims, and the student victims were members of a women's university popular with the minority community.

"As casualties were being brought to the hospital terrorists had taken position inside the hospital building," he told reporters.

"They opened fire on administration and police officials who arrived at the hospital. One suicide bomber blew himself up in the hospital."

Nisar said he was unable to give exact casualty figures for the hospital attack, but Abdul Wasey, spokesman for the paramilitary Frontier Corps earlier said 11 were killed and 17 wounded in the bombing.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks but Quetta is a focal point for sectarian violence between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shi'ites, who account for 20 per cent of Pakistan's 180 million population.

A giant bomb planted in a water tanker being towed by a tractor killed 90 Shi'ite Hazaras in February, while another suicide bombing at a snooker club in January killed 92 others.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group officially banned by the government in 2002, claimed responsibility for both attacks.

The bus targeted in Saturday's attack was from Sardar Bahadur Khan Women's University, which is located close to a Shi'ite Hazara neighbourhood in Quetta, and many Hazaras are students.

Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, is rife with Islamist militancy and a regional insurgency waged by separatists demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources

Overnight, separatist militants blew up a historic building in Baluchistan linked to Pakistan's founding father, razing its structure to the ground.

The attackers armed with automatic weapons entered the 19th century wooden Ziarat Residency after midnight and planted several bombs, senior administration official Nadeem Tahir told AFP.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the driving force behind the creation of the Pakistan, spent his last days in the building which was declared a national monument following his death, one year after the country's independence in 1947.